Chronicle of the Graveyard Shift
by Selto854
Summary: Hapless rebel soldiers on an alien planet are suddenly informed they'll be receiving a visitor. A hostile visitor. One who wants nothing more than to decorate its armor with their brain matter... Rated M for graphic violence and some swearing.


"You're working a graveyard shift. Get ready."

As soon as I heard the harsh buzz of my COM and registered what I was told, I wasn't sure just how to respond. A simple 'alright' would have sufficed. A more formal 'yes, sir' would have definitely done me some good. I just couldn't gather the words to convey what I wanted to say. I was going to be working a graveyard shift. The English language doesn't have words to relay such shock and terror as I felt at that moment. I couldn't put my feelings into action. I choked back a stone in my throat and squeaked out something indecipherable and nearly inaudible. I don't even remember what it was. Looking back now, all I can really say is I felt the shadow of the Grim Reaper standing over me, and I was powerless to do anything to stop it.

Graveyard shifts were a clever name. Of course, a normal graveyard shift to a dock worker or civvie means that you just work later and have to close or something pointless and bleak. A graveyard shift in the Extraterrestrial Liberation Front meant you were going to die. They also usually took place at night, since that was when skeleton crews were operating and minimum resistance would occur. It was a very fun way to describe someone's last hours. Just working a graveyard shift.

Normally, a standard lance of USM troops was nothing too difficult to work with. We could take them out with minor casualties or end in a stalemate, leading to them getting shuttled off our planet and us staying on our soil. Normal USM skirmishes didn't denote a graveyard shift unless something really massive was going to happen. No, graveyard shifts were named because there was advance intel being sent that told us that we were going to be faced with the most lethal threat to our organization. A galactic boogieman.

Unit 076015-b, from Space Station L. USM forces named it 'Beelze.' We stuck with 'The Unit.'

The entire purpose of a graveyard shift was twofold. First, it was to trim the fat in the ELF numbers. We were plenty trillion strong, so it couldn't hurt to wipe out a couple hundred million or so, right? That's just a drop in the bucket. The other purpose was to gather data on The Unit. We were outfitted with cameras in our helmets that we seldom used, because it was just unnecessary. Well, for these missions, we switched on our cameras, turned on night vision, and recorded everything in real time to send back to Base. This let them analyze The Unit's attacks, patterns, intelligence, et cetera. Sure, it caused some outcry… but how else would Base be able to counterattack The Unit?

Up until this point I just assumed it was a run of bad luck. I mean, graveyard shifts would only really happen in the outer fringes of our territory, where the USM knocked on our front doors. We were near the _center,_ though. We were one galaxy over from Base. Defenses like that should have guaranteed us success, yeah?

On the planet Metus, the nights were definitely something to behold. Temperatures dropped to around -57 Celsius, and glass storms frequented the surface. Little tiny bits of glass would form out of the constant rain and hail, and harden and harden some more into these ridiculously sharp, bitter shards of glass. We wore specially requisitioned cloaks to protect ourselves from it, since being exposed to the outside would strip a man of his flesh in a couple of seconds. Not only that, but it was absolutely pitch-black, since the atmosphere of Metus didn't allow light to filter in from outside the planet. Yeah, the air was so dense and thick we had to make our _own_ light in order to operate here.

Naturally, the base was a little warmer and well-equipped. Outside there were some outposts here and there-not heated, of course-with some ammo stocks and a couple of extra cloaks. Should any poor sap have a rip in his cloak, it can get fixed almost straight-away, assuming he can haul himself to the nearest station. Most of us didn't worry too much if we got a tiny tear in our cloaks. It was frigid, and we almost always got frostbite, but it was easily treatable and a pittance from our pockets.

"Gather your troops. Set up the automated turrets outside, and have someone man the heavy turret at the entrance of the gate. They should be touching down shortly," the COM crackled again, snapping me out of my trance. In my delirious state, I replied, "Nice," and shut off my COM.

My squad, The 97th March, was spread relatively thin that night. I remember in the base there was me, Primo, our field medic, and Quimble, our heavy weapons fellow. I was the CO of the team, which meant I was just barely above Quimble's rank and I held absolute dominion over Primo. Everyone else under my command was either in Tunimar fighting some stupid battle, or getting smashed on Nemyo. Some of us were actually doing stuff, serving The Steel Guard, but the rest of us were pushing papers or just wasting time.

"Primo, Quimble, report."

"... here, boss. What's good?" Primo's gruff voice responded. It was rough and coarse, like sandpaper along a metal wall. I never enjoyed listening to Primo much. As a field medic, I always had to hear him yapping about popping a lung by not diving correctly, or how much bone marrow it takes to rebuild a femur.

"-eporting, bad reception. I'm in-wer wing, t-something's off, right?" Quimble cut through, droning like an aggressor wasp nest. He was in the lower wing, where COM chatter might as well be in the middle of a dishwasher. At least those two were here…

"I got some news that'll make you both want to resign. Ready?" I heard two small _pings_ in my headset, audio confirmation that meant 'yes' in the ELF. I took a deep breath. "We're working a graveyard shift."

"... you… you serious?" Primo asked, his voice quivering. For a moment it was almost tolerable…

"Yeah. Haul your asses up here, I'm standing in the control center. I gotta get these turrets online, and one of us has to man the heavy sentry out there. We'll draw straws. Get up here, double time."

At 0243 hours, Primo, Quimble, and I were all in the same room. We drew straws to see which unlucky fellow would be going outside in the bluster. Primo drew the shortest straw, and he gave us a shaky farewell. As soon as the base doors closed and he was outside, I made a cross and said a quick prayer. Quimble unhooked his Spinmachine-an incredibly high powered, multi-chambered assault rifle-from the wall, slapped in a fresh supply of bullets, and nodded at me. I recognized the packaging: these were T-1776 bullets. They melted whatever they touched... incendiary rounds with actually molten metal inside of them. I powered on the automated turrets and waited for Primo's confirmation that he had reached the heavy sentry.

"You know, I heard The Unit eats people," Quimble said absent-mindedly. I told him to knock it off and turn on his camera. He complied. After about five or six minutes, I got a _ping_ in my headset, indicating Primo was in position. I told him to turn on his camera as well, and heard another _ping._ For a team that was doomed, we were making surprisingly good time.

"I think I can see something out there, warping the shape of the glass… looks like machinery. Enemy machiner-oh, shit. They landed," Primo's voice slapped me in the face, the realization being all too soon. I ordered him to open fire, hoping we could level the ship before it even unloaded its cargo. He replied, "Roger," and I heard the turret firing its incendiary rockets.

Being a standard-issue ELF turret, it had a limited supply of rockets and needed to be refilled every now and again. It turns out this night it had very meager supplies-around eight rockets. Normally, eight rockets would be enough to destroy a lightly-armored cruiser, but in the middle of a glass storm? And not to mention we didn't know what kind of tech this ship had. Primo fired with reckless abandon, his lack of combat experience dooming him for sure.

"There, that's it. I heard the explosion and saw the stupid tub go down. Anything in there has to be toast… plus we got those automated turrets hammering on it, too. Don't worry, this graveyard shift won't be nothin' but a normal shift."

Quimble suggested we position ourselves on opposite sides of the door, so that way if an intruder came in it wouldn't have a clear target. I set myself up along the right side of the wall, somewhat concealed in shadow, and Quimble was on the left, illuminated by the ghostly pallor of the computer monitors mounted on the wall. I heard a round of firing-definitely not turret fire, and definitely not sentry fire. Something foreign. It resounded with an oily quality-dirty-sounding and imprecise. Two or three of these rang out, and then the next thing I heard was pure, unbridled fury filtering in through my headset.

Primo was screaming all sorts of obscenities, and I could hear his standard-issue pistol going off. ELF pistols wouldn't be fit to shoot through wet paper bags, so he might as well have just been throwing spitballs. Unfortunately, Primo didn't scream obscenities for too long. He began screaming in fear, then in agony. I considered turning off my headset, because I felt nauseous listening as the storm stripped him apart, but I would need to talk to Quimble somehow. After some more gurgling and ripping noises, Primo's COM went dead and there was no more feedback. I looked at Quimble; Quimble had horror reflecting out of his eyeballs.

I heard Primo's COM rustle a bit, and I felt myself breathing a sigh of relief. He was probably gonna be crippled for life, but at least he could still talk to us and tell us what was going on.

"Killed him. You are next."

Quimble made a noise like a choked cough, and the COM went dead again. If I had to describe the voice that spoke to us… well, it would be nothing short of evil incarnate. It was robotic, and tinny. It had a deep quality to it, booming and bassy, that demanded respect. I don't like thinking about it…

In any case, Quimble suggested we move a bit further back, to an elevated position. Seeing as how there were stairs next to us, we moved to them and set up on opposite sides of the platform. We heard some more oily shots, and then the automated turret fire. After a few explosions, none of the turrets fired again. It was soul-crushing.

Eventually, we heard heavy, pounding steps on the ground outside. The weight behind each step… it was unfathomable. We heard it clearly before it was even five meters within range of us. After the footsteps, though, came another greasy shot that tore right through the doors of the base like paper. Quimble stopped breathing. I whispered to not fire right away, and to let The Unit get in range where we could actually do some damage. The Unit poked its head through the hole, inspecting the place. His head swivelled on an axis, rotating with an uncanny whirring noise. After it realized there were no enemies around, it fired off a few more shots and destroyed the rest of the door. The bluster outside, miraculously, did not come in. What did, though, was much worse.

There's not really a way to describe a Grim Reaper. You can say dark, deathly, mysterious. You could describe it as a harbinger of doom, and how it embodied death. It could be a man in a robe, or a teenager in a speeding ship. It could be anything. The one thing I didn't expect, though, was this Unit.

Its head was conical in shape, and the top half was some black, reflective metal. The lower half was bone-just as our projections stated-and had a lipless mouth torn into it. Its eyes were grey and penetrating, and light filtered out of them light miniature bulbs. Its armor was imposing, yet simple. Standard USM-issue gear. It wasn't angular at all, and it covered most all of the figure. It was smooth and glossy, the same texture as the creature's head. Of note were two pink ribbons on the side of its collar, which I automatically identified as marking the creature to Space Station L in the USM.

It was wearing shoulderpads, which made the lumbering, seven-foot-tall giant seem even larger than it was. Green puffs of radiation and gas filtered out of an apparatus on the thing's chestplate, near the bottom. Every so often I would hear a _ffsshhhh_ and there was a fresh burst being expelled. Two pale, milky-white arms shot out of cavities in the sides of the armor, worms writhing around inside of them. It was disgusting to look at until I realized they weren't worms at all. They appeared to be… veins.

The Unit's torso was made of red and blue tubes full of some unidentifiable liquid. They must have stretched all throughout its body, linking it with the separate pieces of armor. Keeping it in place were some triangular magnet docks on the groin and hip area. If we focused fire on that, The Unit would bust apart… but the target was just too small. Quimble couldn't make the shot; he was a spray-and-pray guy. I couldn't do it either because my sharpshooting was lazy. It looked impenetrable.

Perhaps the two scariest things were its nanocannon and its face. The nanocannon was large, bulky. The size of a preschooler, and mounted on its right arm like some sort of parasite. It spun and made a curious clicking noise, and light shone from both sides. It would have been a spectacle if it weren't for it belonging to the enemy. As for its face… Well, when it spotted Quimble and I? It made this hideous snarling noise and its face contorted into an expression of euphoric fury. With every new emotion I heard cracking noises as the calcium faceplate tried to warp and change itself. Quimble immediately opened fire when he saw it had locked on.

Each bullet bounced right off the Unit's carapace. It mocked us, made this guttural groaning noise that I could compare to a garbage disposal, and began to ascend the stairs, shrugging off the bullets smacking into its body. Quimble, desperately trying to inflict some sort of damage, unhooked his holosaber from his belt and powered it on. The sharp, white-hot plasma projected itself into the shape of a scimitar and Quimble held it as skillfully as any knight from Arthur's time. He snuck up against the wall, asking me to distract the Unit, and when he turned to face me he would drive the saber into its back. I nodded.

As soon as the Unit rounded onto our position though, I attempted to draw its fire by firing a shot from my rifle at it. Unfazed, the Unit turned to the immediate right and saw Quimble, clutching his holosaber. Quimble rushed it, trying to drive the sword into its jaw. Unfortunately, the Unit was two steps ahead.

It sidestepped, causing Quimble to stick the damn thing into the ground. He struggled to unhook it, giving the Unit the time it needed to do its business. It yanked on Quimble's hair, drawing a squeal from him and loosening his grip on the handle of his blade. It swivelled him around next and picked him up by what little hair remained. Quimble spat into its face and dug into its arm, trying to get it to unhand him. He succeeded in breaking through the skin, but his success was only rewarded by molten-hot calcium leaking onto the greater majority of the hand. The smell of burning flesh is one I won't forget.

After some more desperate screams from Quimble, I found myself unable to move. I was frozen, staring in absolute terror at what unfolded before me. After the Unit made its awful noise again, it slammed Quimble's face into its nanocannon. Quimble shrieked for the Unit to stop, but it was too late. Quimble's mouth, open and unaware, took a direct blast from the nanocannon. The intense radiation was too much for his body, and tumors and cysts sprouted all over him almost instantly, bursting and spraying blood and goo everywhere. Quimble, still gasping and quivering for air, begged the Unit to stop.

The Unit offered no solace. It grabbed Quimble by the hair again and slammed him into the wall repeatedly. It must have connected seven or eight times. Quimble eventually quit groaning, and blood stopped spurting out of the orifice I used to know as his face. The Unit placed the body on the floor carefully, face on the ground, and placed its boot on the shivering corpse's spine. It turned to me, grinned, and placed all of its weight on it. A crunch resounded through the hallways. Quimble's spine was destroyed, unwilling to fight back, and was rendered void. The Unit picked up the body one more time, smashing the skull into the wall and popping out the tender morsels of brain that were left.

After that, I felt a warmth in my pants, and realized I had wet myself. I dropped to my knees, the weight of this situation too much for me. I heard the heavy footsteps pacing towards me. I felt the Unit's hot breath on my head. I knew it was over.

"Tell me."

I shivered, tears welling up in my eyes, choking back sobs. I began to drool uncontrollably. I tried to move my head up so I could face my attacker-meet my death with dignity.

"What are you feeling?"

The Unit picked me up by my back, and lifted me up to eye level with him. I groaned, asking him to please unhand me and take me as a prisoner. He narrowed his eyes at me. He brought me closer to his face, my tears staining his bony faceplate.

"What do you hope to accomplish?"

Everything went black after that.


End file.
